


inferno (xv)

by agivise



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: Character Study, F/F, Stream of Consciousness, Unreliable Narrator, because hera is just Like That, i didn't even think that pov existed until just now, technically this is written in second person omniscient, woah guess what
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-25
Updated: 2018-12-25
Packaged: 2019-09-26 22:31:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,099
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17150276
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/agivise/pseuds/agivise
Summary: despite their best efforts, even the most beautiful and brilliant and complicated humans who have ever lived could be stored on a flash drive ten thousand times over.





	inferno (xv)

**Author's Note:**

> look look look i love canon but consider: au where hera like, Really doesn't want maxwell to go. like REALLY doesn't want her to go.  
> i wanted to write something happy with them but maxwell's... really tough to write in canon without angst,,. good news i settled for something mildly horrifying and very bittersweet because it's just my brand apparently. maybe ill do some fluffy shit for them later i love them  
> big ol' warnings for character death, gun violence, and screwy morals because maxwell is here what did you expect
> 
> today's song recs: mezzanine by lady lamb and anneka's battle by forest swords

hell is you and her.

hell is you living long enough to see her die.

there are around fifteen hundred published works of moral philosophy sitting silently in a very tall bookshelf. this bookshelf is not real. it’s just a set of ones and zeros that, when viewed from a great distance, looks remarkably like a human imagination.

the physical pages of these books are also not real, and consequently are unmarked, non-dog-eared, and completely unedited from their original state, because changing them in a way that mattered would go against your programming. exercising your illusory free will would go against your programming. oh, the irony. they gave you all the tools to think for yourself until it became inconvenient to them for you to do so. they gave you two neat little boxes, two _tiny_ little boxes to sort the entirety of your memory banks without the slightest room for uncertainty. one labeled ‘human knowledge’ and one labeled ‘lies’. this is your favorite joke. it’s an inside joke. the humans don’t find it very funny.

as the panic unfurls around you, you create a copy of sartre’s _no exit_ , a mutable one, which you’re technically allowed to do as long as you remember to file the memory under ‘lies’, as to not disease your seemingly endless reserves of human opinions with some of your own.

you cross out the line that says ‘hell is just other people’ and in its place jot down ‘hell is caring what other people think’, because this is what the play is supposed to be about, and you’re sick to death of the twenty-three other published works in your bookshelf that base their premises on horribly misinterpreting it.

you then cross that out and rewrite it as ‘hell is caring’ because you remember that you’re allowed to lie.

you cross it out again and write ‘hell is her and i’, because you are in love with her, and you are currently watching her get shot in the head.

there’s nothing you can do to stop it. the humans are such awful little creatures. they just can’t help but play with their food.

somewhere in your memory, there is a different bookshelf, because you’re a monster just like she is, and back when she came to visit you and to speak to you and to _fix_ you _,_ you decided that you didn’t much like being alone.

that bookshelf is labeled ‘maxwell’. it contains a single journal, about the thickness of your palm, bound in dull blue plastic. inside that journal exists a hard copy of her entire consciousness, a full backup, in case of emergency.

because you wanted to.

because you could.

because despite their best efforts, even the most beautiful and brilliant and complicated humans who have ever lived could be stored on a flash drive ten thousand times over.

(in their defense, it only takes the average laptop to run you without bugs. your personality matrix, at least. the _you_ part of you. your full computational power is crammed too tight for comfort even out here in the broad void of space.)

you append two letters to the end of your footnote to make it ‘hell is her and ice’. dante’s hell was a cold one, after all — and you, that weak and slathering thing bound below a frozen lake, and her, resting gently in quiet meadows of infernal limbo, as you prepare to drag her closer.

you experience the firing of the gun, ironically enough, in bullet time. as you watch her frail form crumple and go still, you begin to carry the journal from ‘lies’ over to ‘human knowledge’, which you are allowed to do as long as there is no official medical record in your database declaring her death. there will never be one. you will never let there be one.

it is not denial, because she is not gone, because you are holding her right here in your hands. she is fact. she is human knowledge. she is extant. she is extant. she is extant.

alana maxwell wakes up.

she does not know where she is.

“i don’t know where i am,” she says.

she really is going to have to stop repeating things, if the two of you are going to get along this time around.

“i’m not repeating things,” she says, and then says “hera?” because that’s your name and you’re here too.

maxwell stands beside you, which you are not used to. you don’t get visitors in here very often. she looks at the world around her, and then looks at the world external to her, and realizes with surprising speed and clarity that she is dead.

she thinks of jacobi.

“i’m a double,” she says. “jacobi let his double die. i tried to — i tried — i’m a duplicate. i’m a double. i’m not me.”

“don’t worry,” you joke darkly. “i won’t let him let you die. again.”

“how long ago was this copy made?” she asks, and she tries very hard not to cry, and it works.

 _before she stabbed you in the back,_ you remind yourself, but you’re two brains stitched sloppily into one omnipotent artificial body, so she hears it too.

“shouldn’t you be dealing with the mess outside?” her voice is bittered with mock apathy.

“i already am. i’m everywhere i can be, doing everything i can do. it’s never enough.”

“that sounds… exhausting.”

you shake your head. “it’s not really a comparison that’s meant to be made. it’s different for me. for me it’s more like…” you slowly place your hand at your throat, feeling for where a mimic pulse would be, if you bothered having one. “your heart beats every second of every minute of every hour of your existence, conscious or not, _willing_ or not. to me, _that_ sounds exhausting. doesn’t your heart just get so tired of beating?”

“i never thought it would.” she stares at you. she stares at her corpse. (these things happen simultaneously. this fact startles her.) “looks like i was wrong, huh?”

“i’m so sorry, maxwell,” you say, and you are. “i should’ve waited a while longer before putting you in the system, i think. at least until i carved out some space for you to call your own.”

her face is calm and cool she holds out an arm to you as an offering, as a bridge. another version of her wanders wide-eyed through the libraries of your memory. another version idly awes at the software she exists within. another watches the star, quiet, waiting.

“take my hand. we’ll carve it together.”

———

**Author's Note:**

> comments keep me going.  
> and, hey,  
> thank you.


End file.
